Strange Insteon Turn

[Mike]

Well, I had an electrician in this weekend. He did a few things:

1. Rearranged some breakers for the central ac, tightened things up and regrounded things. (The lights would dim slightly when the ac went on).
2. Made a duplex outlet into a quad.
3. Ran two floor outlets in the living room.
4. Ran a common from the ac to the thermostat.
5. Ran cat 5 to the door for my keypad

Just background (a few I know to have no bearing). Before he came, my Insteon setup was 100% reliable. Granted I am automating only certain lights, but they were 100% reliable over the last x months. If I used the web page on the elk, everything worked.

He left and guess what: Nothing works. I don't think a single one works any more remotely. The signals are being sent and the elk thinks it is on, but none of them seem to trigger.

I was going to try and relink my signallincs and possibly reset the elk and reload the settings. Anyone have any thoughts?

I haven't heard anything about don't do any electrical work once you have it setup... All the lights and such still work locally (and a few are cross linked and they still seem to work).

 

[rocco]

Mike, you said he rearranged some breakers. Could the SignalLinc couplers now be on the same phase?

 

[SmartLabsMike]

Mike, you said he rearranged some breakers. Could the SignalLinc couplers now be on the same phase?

This would be a good place to start.

Everything functions - they just do not communicate?

 

[Digger]

I have to agree that the RF lincs need to be verified but........ wouldnt that affect some not all of the lights? I guess its possible depending on the size and arrangement of your system.

I to have done electrical work and MAYBE by shutting off the power and turning it back on it could have caused a problem. I have not rearranged breakers in over a year so that is not applicable.

Now that I think about it all of the switches that no longer work are on 3 circuits that have been shutoff the past few months (to replace a switch etc.). But why wont they relink after power is turned back on?

There has to be a reason these things are happening. Maybe try a factory reset and relink but I thought I tried that a few times?

 

[fitzpatri8]

I haven't heard anything about don't do any electrical work once you have it setup... All the lights and such still work locally (and a few are cross linked and they still seem to work).

If devices you manually link work fine, but the Elk can't talk to them any more, then you've got a problem with the Elk, the wiring from the Elk to the PowerLinc, or the PowerLinc.

Does the PowerLinc light flash when you tell the Elk to transmit? If you plug a ControLinc into the PowerLinc, can it control other devices okay? When the electrician was wiring up the Cat5, was he inside the Elk enclosure?

Tom

 

[Mike]

A few things going on here and I have been busy so have not been able to run some of the tests I wanted to:

1. Linked switches seem to work, although there is one that I think might be having an issue (I assumed it was a linking issue that I never fixed, but now I need to go back and check as it was the top/bottom of the stairs combination, which I am fairly certain was working before. I know I have four switches linked in the kitchen. It still works, although the timing is not identical in all cases (but this is how it was before).
2. I was thinking that on the breakers, although I think the primary move was to place the CAC breakers at the top of the panel. I don't think anything else was moved (other than what was on top). Now that I think of it I lean towards this possibly not being it because of that and the fact that I believe I have 4 signallincs. Regardless, I will reset these to test.
3. The cat5 is not an issue. The reason I know this is that it was run inside the wall and I am running it to the basement (he did the hard part) so it is not connected. The elk was never touched during this operation.
4. I can tell the rules are triggering, but I did not go to the basement to check the lights when they are firing. I'll test this.

The issue mainly appears (I have to test it further now, as the link I mentioned above might have been messed up slightly when I was playing with Powerhome and never corrected). Especially since other linked switches seem to be fine.

All elk communications seem to not work. I have not tried relinking to the elk or switches yet either. Strange.

SmartlabsMike > Well, they all seem to function, and seem to communicate partially (from links), it seems something threw off Elk communications primarily (at least from what I can tell).

I'll try to run more tests tomorrow.

 

[Mike]

If devices you manually link work fine, but the Elk can't talk to them any more, then you've got a problem with the Elk, the wiring from the Elk to the PowerLinc, or the PowerLinc.


Tom

I see your logic, but nothing was touched there, and it seems rather coincidental that it fails after the electrical work. A surge might make sense, but the equipment is on APC gear (well not the powerlinc).

I still have a spare from my powerhome tests, so I could try relinking the existing and the spare to see if that yields any information.

So I guess the one that makes the most sense is, did my powerlinc fail during this...

 

[fitzpatri8]

If devices you manually link work fine, but the Elk can't talk to them any more, then you've got a problem with the Elk, the wiring from the Elk to the PowerLinc, or the PowerLinc.


Tom

I see your logic, but nothing was touched there, and it seems rather coincidental that it fails after the electrical work. A surge might make sense, but the equipment is on APC gear (well not the powerlinc).

I still have a spare from my powerhome tests, so I could try relinking the existing and the spare to see if that yields any information.

So I guess the one that makes the most sense is, did my powerlinc fail during this...

There you have it! The Elk is on an APC, so it never knew the power failed and never sent the signals to re-establish communications with the PowerLinc after its power was restored.

I had the same thing happen here. I lost power, but the UPS kept the HAL server running. When the power came back up, HAL couldn't talk to the PowerLinc until HAL was restarted. I cured the problem by plugging the PowerLinc *into a battery-backed outlet on the UPS*, something I'd never think of doing with a cm11a. Even operating through the filtered power, the signal is getting through to other house devices. (YMMV. I've used the PowerLinc through both an Energizer and Belkin UPS without any trouble. If I wanted a stronger signal, I could always plug a SignaLinc RF into the back of the PowerLinc.)

And don't forget to go back and fix that link you were messing with using PowerHome!

Tom

 

[Steve]

Maybe I'm wrong, but that sounds to me like an issue with the Powerlinc. I've had several power failures and when the power is restored the Elk and CQC resume talking just fine to the UPB CIM.

 

[Mike]

That must have been it. I unplugged the powerlinc and cycled the power on the Elk (that may not have been required) and went back upstairs and I can control it via the web page.

I did not realize that the communication needed to be restarted, so did not relate the two.

Thanks for your help! I was worried I was going to have problems or a lot of troubleshooting.

I just checked almost every light and it works via the web interface. The only thing I noticed was my thermostat (HAI) does not respond, but that might just take a few minutes. [ Edit: Now it is working again so everything looks good now ]

 

[SmartLabsMike]

Glad you are back up and running.

 

[Digger]

So after a power outage the ELK and the PLC were no longer communicating.

Your problem is different then mine but I will keep this in the back of my mind in case something similar comes up.

 

[fitzpatri8]

So after a power outage the ELK and the PLC were no longer communicating.

Your problem is different then mine but I will keep this in the back of my mind in case something similar comes up.

Just to clarify, it was after *half* a power outage. The Elk's power was always on (via UPS) while the PowerLinc's power was cycled. When he removed external power to the Elk, then plugged it back in, then the Elk automatically re-connected to the PLC and everything worked.

FWIW, I believe that plugging the Elk into a UPS goes against its installation instructions. One of the security features of the Elk is that it can alert on a power failure. It can only know that the power has failed if it is attached directly to the powerline. It is designed to self-manage its backup power via its own dedicated battery pack.

If both the Elk and the PLC ran from the UPS, or both were plugged directly into an outlet, he would've never had a problem. It was one on, one off that confused the Elk.

Tom

 

[Mike]

But under this situation, I guess you are saying that if I had the elk plugged into a normal outlet (I was using the APC module primarily for the surge protection since the Elk has its own battery) and it went to battery power, it would know this and restablish the connection to the powerlinc when power was restored?

The other question is, should I be putting the elk into a normal outlet..?

 

[fitzpatri8]

But under this situation, I guess you are saying that if I had the elk plugged into a normal outlet (I was using the APC module primarily for the surge protection since the Elk has its own battery) and it went to battery power, it would know this and restablish the connection to the powerlinc when power was restored?

The other question is, should I be putting the elk into a normal outlet..?

That's what I'm saying.